Ravenor Cars Greenford London Reviews - Misleading Car Dealer

My son recently bought a car from Ravenor Cars based in Greenford, London. The alarm bells should have been ringing when he first arrived and there was no obvious premises for the dealer. After a phone call a metal gate opened with a selection of cars tightly parked behind it.

After some juggling around of the cars the one he was interested in was moved out so it could be viewed. It was in a much worse condition than appeared in the advert online. Admittedly sometimes it's not always possible to see every dent or mark from photos and it's in a dealers interest to make the car look as good as they can but some were quite significant dents or parking damage.

The car was taken for a test drive and all seemed to be ok mechanically. A price was agreed based on the fact the car was in cosmetically worse condition than was expected. The dealer tried to say that it was due to the age of the car but the car we arrived in was 4 years older without any of the dents or damage!

Payment was made online although payment was made to Mr MA Khan rather than Ravenor Cars.

Problems with the car have included failed lambda sensors, failed clutch, timing chain stretch, cam adjuster fault and serious leak from Haldex transfer box. Mr Khan had no interest in dealing with any of these issues and has tried claiming that he has zero responsibility. There is the option to take legal action through the small claims court but it is probably more effective to make readers aware of the problems they are likely to face buying a car from Ravenor Cars in London.

Ravenor Cars Greenford London Beware This Car Dealer

Golf R32/Audi A3 V6 3.2 Engine Timing chain adjuster problems 022 109 088J

The Audi A3 V6 and Golf R32 are well known for timing chain issues so it wasn't a surprise to have to change the chain on my 2004 model A3 3.2 V6.

The car was giving an engine warning light and fault codes via VCDS which kept coming back. As the clutch needed doing we decided that doing all the jobs at the same time would make sense so out the engine came!

Everything was straightforward, luckily no snapped bolts unlike our Jag X type project and after a full day of work in the garage the engine was removed from the car.

Next stage was to replace the timing chain, guides and tensioners which was all easy to access with the engine out. However coming to time the car up once all the new parts were in place was proving rather problematic. After 2 rotations the exhaust camshaft was out of line every time.

We then noticed that the exhaust cam adjust sprocket had quite a lot of play in it so every time the inlet cam moved the chain, the exhaust didnt move immediately until the slack was taken up.

We took the exhaust cam adjuster apart by removing the Torx T30 bolts that were holding it together to look inside. There's a pin that is meant to lock into a hole to stop the adjuster moving and this can be moved by the oil pressure.

Over time the hole that the pin drops into can widen so that it no longer locks the adjuster into place and it appears that this is what has happened to our one. It's apparently a common issue but there seemed to be very little information about it online, possibly because very few people go to this level of taking cars apart at home and documenting it.

Next stage is ordering a new one from Audi. There are many different versions of the adjusters available for different cars but unfortunately no aftermarket ones for this version so £540 lighter we got one from Audi themselves.

Inside the timing chain adjuster sprocket on the Audi A3 V6